The wisdom of crowds, consumer–generated ads, news importance selected by the masses, infotainment… New media today is for the people, by the people. The Web employs this model with increasing saturation, but it’s not just the Web that is doing so. All media, many large businesses, and most of the newly forming cultural mechanisms are adopting this nonsense.

If a war in the Middle East is seen as likely, for instance, oil prices will probably increase. Hayek’s insight showed that the results can be surprisingly accurate, as long as enough people are allowed to wager real money on the outcome.
Prediction markets
Now, technology firms are using a modern twist on this idea, called prediction markets, as a way to save money, harness the distributed knowledge of their rank-and-file employees, and even answer questions like: When will this software ship? And what will memory prices be like in a few months?